Quickies III: Hot New Wires from Kubala-Sosna,
WyWires, and ModWright!by Robert H. Levi

Here's a quick update for our PFO readers on
some cables that I think you should be aware of. No drill-down-deep reviews;
just some hot reports from the front!

I am delighted to see three superb entrepreneurial
companies pouring money into R&D in these crazy times to develop new
cutting-edge wires for the eager audiophile. All three of these selections
arrived within the last month, all are outstanding wires, and one is the best in
the world today based on my personal explorations.

WyWire's Custom Digital LITESPD Interface

We'll start with a company that makes one off custom
wires for the audiophile's personal system use. That's right, WyWire's makes
just the right tailored interconnect, speaker cable, power cord, or newest
digital SPDIF cable for the specific system you may describe. The prices are
competitive with average priced top brands, mostly under $1000 per meter, but
perform way beyond expectations. Their latest digital selections are
extraordinary.

LITESPD Digital Interfaces:

USB A/B: To integrate a laptop
or music server to a digital analog converter (DAC)

S/PDIF: To integrate a digital
transport or music server to a DAC (Logitech's Squeezebox, iPod Dock)

AES/EBU: To integrate
professional grade digital equipment to a DAC

I currently use their analog wires in both my
reference systems in selected positions that are maximized by these handcrafted
beauties. Why am I not surprised at the quality of WyWire's digital offerings?
When the manufacturer asked me to name the price per meter of his cable, I
guessed they were about $1000 per meter based purely on their performance with
my new E.A.R. Acute III CD & DAC Player in house. When he told me it was $329
per meter, I plotzed. This is fantastic digital wire, and 80-90% as detailed and
colorless as any digital cable at any price! WOW!

The LITESPD cable is so advanced, it's very hard to
hear its tiny flaws. With an even response from top to bottom, it's very quiet,
extremely smooth, and very richly detailed. I found it more musical and detailed
than any other digital cable in house at the time, and I had 14 brands available
to me when the WyWires was auditioned. It remains in my number 1 reference
system to this date and is killer good.

I have been reviewing Dan Wright's brilliant
creations for a while now, turning Sony's base metal digital players into pure
gold musical masterpieces. Each modification included more advanced tube power
supplies, more sophisticated mods, and improved Sony playback. Lacking was the
last word in cables connecting the PS 9.0 Power Supply with the various modified
and tubified Sony decks. No longer. The "TRUTH" has arrived, and it's just
grand!

Manufactured in-house by the ModWright team, it
contains a secret blend of purest silver and copper yielding the most detailed
and musical performance with your Modwright Sony, ever. I compared it to the
pure silver purple version and the blue all-copper version, as well as the stock
all-copper version you get for the base price of the mod. No contest.

Closest sonically to the all copper blue cable, the
TRUTH has a more delicate, quicker, and more even-sounding character. It is
obviously more detailed and more realistic, too. I love it. I tried it with both
the 999 and 9100 Sony's in-house, and have good reason to believe it will
maximize any player ever modded by ModWright. Remember, cables are components,
too. I think that you will be quite delighted by the TRUTH in your setup. Order
it with your mod as an upgrade for $250, or by itself for $300. A must-own for
your ModWright mod, in my book!

I saved the best for last! Kubala-Sosna's new
Elation! S/PDIF cable tops the list for me. Expensive, yes. Flexible, pretty
good. Fit and finish, wonderful. Performance, state of the art, and a game
changer if there ever was one. Interfacing between my Alesis Masterlink and
E.A.R. Acute III CD/DAC Player, it makes digital sound as alive, airy,
grainless, smooth, and analog-like as I have ever experienced in that setting!

I tried the K-S with MP3, Red Book, 20/48, 24/88,
24/96, 24/176, and 24/192 sampling rates and detected nary a flaw. Live
recordings were more articulate and demonstrated bigger and deeper soundstages
than I remembered. My in-house S/PDIF cables were put to shame… even my
all-silver coax sourced from the TVA in 1944… sounded vague and gritty compared
to the Elation! The Kimber D60 was not even in the ballpark.

By the way, this is the first K-S cable that needed
some break in to sound its best. Fifty hours did the job. If you want maximum
definition with the minimum jitter/distortion and phasiness, the Elation! is for
you. If you have very deep pockets, then the Elation! is definitely for
you. Greatness is expensive, and the Elation! is $2700 per meter. Ouch! I
sincerely hope K-S does some trickle-down tech R&D and makes a less-costly
version for the audiophile who owns a typical $1000 DAC.

Meanwhile, I hear no flaws to report in the top
Elation! version. I am not usually at a loss for words, but, in this case, I am.
The Elation! S/PDIF is top of the heap! If you can afford it and you want
absolutely no compromises, man up!